Lonely Times
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: The Time Door was a very lonely place, until the Small Lady - until the pebble that rippled across the surface of the river and changed everything.
1. Loneliness

**A/N:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, c6 - threeshot with chapters exactly 500 words

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 **Lonely Times  
1.**

The Time Door could be a very lonely place, sometimes.

Not always. She had the past, present and future at her fingertips after all. See whatever time she wanted, whoever's time she wanted. It could be a dreamy bliss from which she never had to wake...

But she did. Because she had a duty to perform, and part of her, at least, had to remain outside the door, in the frigid cold.

And that cold part of her was the lonely one: the one who couldn't drown in dream-like images she could bear witness to but never truly be a part of... She was free in the sense that she could fall in love with anyone and it wouldn't affect them at all, and trapped in the sense that not one person she saw would know of her existence, let alone love her back.

And it wasn't just love, but that was the plainest thing: the one that made the heart inside her chest ache so.

But she'd accepted this duty. She who was the princess of a kingdom that no longer existed. That was cast adrift. And this was the role that had anchored her.

And she was content to fulfil it. To bear witness to all these manner of things. To watch silently: to feel happiness and despair and grief in turn, at things she couldn't change - daren't change - and things did not last.

Her job was to watch that all and do two specific things. Make sure no-one else interfered - and make sure the world endured.

Fulfilling the second of those roles meant she only prolonged her time in guarding the door...but that was okay. The door was her home, and she doubted she could leave it otherwise. The hums of those past times that would never return except by a hand like hers (and she would never do it) hummed in her garnet orb. Echoes of the future sung to her behind the door and both of those were like drugs that dragged her in and kept her there. But she had her orb to sate that. To pull her back if she'd been under too long - and there was the other thing. On the other side of the door there was air, in which she could only drown in loneliness. But time had a different ocean that would seize her and not let go if she let it sweep her away, and the garnet orb and the duty that bound her to the other side were the only reasons she could swim against the current.

And that stretching loneliness was sometimes the reason she didn't want to swim, the reason she wanted so simply bob like a pebble in the sea until she sunk, until she drowned. But there were stronger things than her single, feeble heart, and so she endured. Waif-like, at times, and wondering how much longer she could manage it, but she endured.

And then Small Lady came.


	2. Friendship

**Lonely Times  
2.**

Small Lady visited far often than anyone else – was often the only visitor for long stretches of time she couldn't name, but within those stretches she could watch an entire world go by while the Small Lady had only had small misadventures.

She complained a lot, as children were prone to doing. Complained and those complaints were so trivial in the scheme of what she bore witness to that she barely paid attention at all – until she found herself drawing comfort from those pointless murmurs that didn't nudge the world towards its end.

So she humoured the child. Listened with an attentive ear. Comforted where she could. Spoiled a few surprises with her ability to see the future, but hindsight was never a problem for her as it was for those who lived on the Earth. Even the King and Queen fell to hindsight sometimes, and often she would catch herself promising to speak with the young couple before holding her tongue.

She was not a mother, nor a Queen and her duty was not to interfere with those words she saw, she bore witness to. Small Lady's continuous presence was perhaps an interference on its own, but for whatever reason the Queen did not comment on it: her own implicit allowal. So she took comfort in that tentative company: the far too innocent child with far too pointless complaints and did her best to be an ear, a mouth, a hand, a friend.

Bound to eternally guard the Time Door, she never imagined having such a friend.

And it made the lukewarm river of time a little more palatable.

But it came with its own problems.

First and foremost was that she could tell Small Lady little, in the end. What topics she had to avoid, skirt over. What counted as interference. What didn't. What was within the allowed realms to say. And what lines she couldn't cross in front of the royals across time: the Queen on the Moon, the Queen in Neo Tokyo and hundreds of others before and after but they were the inheritors only, the predecessors and successors. In any case, she had her role set out for her: watch over the timelines and never interfere.

It was so much easier to adhere to that when alone, but the Small Lady was a breath of fresh air in the otherwise damp and lukewarm place she was confined within that she could not begrudge the company. Rather, she wanted for it, more than was healthy, more than she should. She found herself skirting the lines far too often, feeling far too much.

The Small Lady had an existence far beyond her, and yet too small to even consider her. And yet she was a constant visitor there. But that was okay, wasn't it? The Queen did not command her otherwise, or command her daughter away. It must have been alright. Perhaps it was even a reward for her, so she could smile again, not just endure.


	3. Freedom

**Lonely Times  
3.**

She had always known Small Lady was the pebble across the water's surface, and perhaps she had drawn a twisted comfort from that as well. Because the pebble was one that plopped in _her_ river, where all the other rivers and times intersected. Because the pebble drew her away from her duty-bound gate and that lonely, mindless vigil she kept.

And there, really, never was a choice.

Perhaps she should have told Neo Queen Serenity this. Staved her heart. Staved her hand. But she could not. Could not because she had craved Small Lady's company oh so very much and didn't want it to end though she knew it must – and therein was another layer of comfort, because the fact that it would end and not repeat in the senseless whirls of time she watched upon made it all the more precious to her. Her only precious thing, since taking up her unending vigil –

And now it _would_ end. It didn't have to, of course, if she was as timeless as her role and not the human she'd been once and become again. It was a cruel test that the Gods gave her. A test she had no hope of passing, and no intention to do so either.

She was to guard the Time Doors for an eternity, and never interfere. She failed when she let the Small Lady past her with a key in her grip. Because the Small Lady could not surprise her, not when she'd seen the past and the future and the present as well. It was her own inaction that let the Small Lady take the key from her.

And it was by her permission and her blessing that the Senshi from the past before Small Lady was born would cross as well.

But they were just the first skips and jumps. Not enough yet to end her endless vigil, to bind her soul to the eternal torment that awaited her and, at last, a past and present and future not visible – and didn't that have its own romantic appeal to her? Her own personal hell being kept from her sight…

The pebble continued across her personal river until it sunk.

It sunk when she left her post and interfered directly with the flow of time. One of the powers her long vigil had granted her. For no-one could watch all those pasts, all those futures, without learning to manipulate them as well.

She should have known. She did know. And it was more than her opportunity to save the Small Lady and Neo Tokyo and the world. It was the chance for her own freedom as well. The end of her eternal vigil, her eternal life. The sleep for her weary soul.

In that sense, steering the world away from the dead end future it was heading to was just the excuse.

And so she broke the law that bound her life and froze time, and said farewell to her loneliness and her soul.


End file.
